Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/89

 EXTENT, DEGREE, AND UNITY IN SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 73 account do not know, but which does or may influence their conduct, and might on occasion of conflict, formulate itself in consciousness as a principle. This idea of a self transcending the self revealed in consciousness has, it may be noticed in passing, the same charm as pertains to the idea of infinite possibilities in any department of knowledge. It is dull to have reached a final end in any topic ; very dull to feel that nothing new will ever reveal itself in an intimate friend's character ; most dull to have penetrated to the very bottom of one's own secret depths. And, happily, we never can be quite sure that some self-revelation is not yet in store for us. We should therefore take as our type of a full self-con- sciousness not a self-revelation already complete, but that amount of self-knowledge and, still more, that capacity for it which is required to maintain intact at every point the unity of reason and right l instinct. We may think of sound sell- knowledge as of sound knowledge in other topics : the alumnus is not he who has a vast knowledge of particulars, but he who knows enough and knows it so that he can know whatever else he wants as occasion requires. Thus regarded, self-knowledge is that kind and that degree of skill in know- ledge which makes right instinct continuous with reason, and which, by making clear the opposition between this fortified reason and unlawful instinct, makes it easy to keep the latter under control. And here we see the psychological connexion between Socrates' injunction to " know thyself " and his faith in the control of conduct by reason. Those lack sufficient self-knowledge, and have thus a settled duality of nature, who are content to go on with their instincts blindly or aided only occasionally by sidelights from reason. These sidelights from reason give the form of conscience, the instincts co-operating with them give the sanction of intuitive force, and a very effective type of conscientiousness may be thus realised when the instincts that could be recognised as principles have throughout the upper hand. This might be called the semi-conscious con- scientious type. Semi-consciousness, i.e., when the total scheme of action is half understood, yields many eccentric types persons, for instance, giving rein to de-socialising instincts, for which they invite the sanction of some crude jumble of practical ideas more or less irrelevant to the instincts in question. 1 By right instinct is meant instinct that can be reconciled with reason as a whole.